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List of birds of Acadia National Park facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Acadia National Park in Maine, USA, is a special place where many different birds live! As of February 2022, experts from the National Park Service have recorded 363 kinds of birds here. That's a lot of feathered friends!

This list follows the official bird guide for North and Middle America, put together by the American Ornithological Society. The names of the bird families come from another guide called the Clements taxonomy.

Most of the birds on this list are regularly seen in Acadia National Park. They might live there all year, visit in summer or winter, or just pass through during migration. Some birds are very common along the Maine coast, but might be seen less often inside the park itself.

Here's what the special tags next to some bird names mean:

  • (R) Rare: These birds are usually seen only a few times each year (26 species).
  • (Unc) Uncommon: You might see these birds monthly in the right places and seasons. They can be common in some small areas (16 species).
  • (O) Occasional: These birds show up in the park at least once every few years, but not necessarily every single year (14 species).
  • (Unk) Unknown: We don't have enough information about how often these birds appear (24 species).
  • (Hist) Historical: These birds were seen in the park a long time ago, but might not be there anymore (27 species).
  • (NC) Unconfirmed: There's not strong proof that these birds have been in the park (115 species).
  • (I) Introduced: These birds were brought to North America by people, not naturally (5 species).
  • (E) Extinct: These birds no longer exist anywhere in the world (4 species).

Contents

Ducks, Geese, and Waterfowl: Water Lovers

Order: Anseriformes   Family: Anatidae

This family includes ducks, geese, and swans. These birds are perfectly built for life in water! They have webbed feet to help them swim, flat bills for finding food, and special oily feathers that shed water easily.

New World Quail: Ground Birds

Order: Galliformes   Family: Odontophoridae

New World quails are small, plump birds that live on the ground. They look a bit like quails from other parts of the world, but they are not closely related.

Pheasants, Grouse, and Allies: Game Birds

Order: Galliformes   Family: Phasianidae

This family includes pheasants and their relatives. They are ground-dwelling birds that vary in size. Many of these birds are hunted for sport or raised for food.

Grebes: Diving Experts

Order: Podicipediformes   Family: Podicipedidae

Grebes are small to medium-sized birds that dive in freshwater. They have special lobed toes that make them excellent swimmers and divers. However, because their feet are set far back on their bodies, they are quite clumsy on land.

Pigeons and Doves: Common Visitors

Order: Columbiformes   Family: Columbidae

Pigeons and doves are birds with sturdy bodies, short necks, and thin bills. You can often see them in many different places.

Cuckoos: Long-Tailed Birds

Order: Cuculiformes   Family: Cuculidae

This family includes cuckoos and roadrunners. These birds come in different sizes, but they all have slender bodies, long tails, and strong legs.

Nightjars and Allies: Night Flyers

Order: Caprimulgiformes   Family: Caprimulgidae

Nightjars are medium-sized birds that are active at night. They usually build their nests on the ground. They have long wings, short legs, and very small bills. Their soft feathers are colored to help them blend in with tree bark or leaves.

Swifts: Always Flying

Order: Apodiformes   Family: Apodidae

Swifts are small birds that spend most of their lives flying. They have very short legs and almost never land on the ground. Instead, they perch on vertical surfaces. Many swifts have long, swept-back wings that look like a crescent moon.

Hummingbirds: Tiny Hoverers

Order: Apodiformes   Family: Trochilidae

Hummingbirds are tiny birds famous for hovering in the air by flapping their wings super fast. They are the only birds that can fly backward!

Rails, Gallinules, and Coots: Shy Water Birds

Order: Gruiformes   Family: Rallidae

This large family includes rails, crakes, coots, and gallinules. Most of these birds live in thick plants near lakes, swamps, or rivers. They are often shy and hard to spot. They have strong legs and long toes, which are great for walking on soft, uneven ground.

Cranes: Tall Dancers

Order: Gruiformes   Family: Gruidae

Cranes are large birds with long legs and long necks. Unlike herons, which look similar, cranes fly with their necks stretched out. Many cranes have amazing and loud dances they perform during mating season.

Stilts and Avocets: Wading Birds

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Recurvirostridae

This family includes avocets and stilts. They are large wading birds. Avocets have long legs and bills that curve upwards. Stilts have extremely long legs and long, thin, straight bills.

Oystercatchers: Shell Openers

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Haematopodidae

Oystercatchers are large, noticeable, and noisy birds that look a bit like plovers. They have strong bills that they use to smash or pry open molluscs like oysters.

Plovers and Lapwings: Open Country Birds

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Charadriidae

This family includes plovers and lapwings. They are small to medium-sized birds with compact bodies, short thick necks, and long, pointed wings. You can find them in open areas all over the world, especially near water.

Sandpipers and Allies: Shoreline Foragers

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Scolopacidae

This is a large and diverse family of small to medium-sized shorebirds. It includes sandpipers, curlews, and snipes. Most of these birds eat small bugs they find in mud or soil. Different bill and leg lengths allow many species to feed in the same areas without competing for food.

Skuas and Jaegers: Strong Fliers

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Stercorariidae

These are medium to large birds, usually gray or brown, often with white marks on their wings. They have longish bills with hooked tips and webbed feet with sharp claws. They are strong, acrobatic fliers.

Auks, Murres, and Puffins: Sea Birds

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Alcidae

Alcids look a bit like penguins because of their black and white colors and how they stand upright. However, they are not closely related to penguins and they *can* fly! Auks live on the open sea and only come to land to nest.

Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers: Coastal Birds

Order: Charadriiformes   Family: Laridae

This family includes gulls, terns, and skimmers. They are medium to large seabirds, usually gray or white, often with black markings on their heads or wings. They have longish bills and webbed feet.

Loons: Diving Waterfowl

Order: Gaviiformes   Family: Gaviidae

Loons are water birds about the size of a large duck, but they are not related to ducks. They are mostly gray or black and have bills shaped like spears. Loons are excellent swimmers and can fly well, but they are very clumsy on land because their legs are placed far back on their bodies.

Albatrosses: Giant Fliers

Order: Procellariiformes   Family: Diomedeidae

Albatrosses are among the largest flying birds. Some, like the great albatrosses, have the biggest wingspans of any living bird!

Storm-Petrels: Small Seabirds

Order: Procellariiformes   Family: Oceanitidae

Storm-petrels are the smallest seabirds. They are related to petrels and eat tiny sea creatures and small fish from the water's surface, often while hovering. They fly with quick, fluttering movements.

Shearwaters and Petrels: True Petrels

Order: Procellariiformes   Family: Procellariidae

This group includes the main types of medium-sized "true petrels." They have nostrils that are joined together and a long, useful outer wing feather.

Frigatebirds: Aerial Masters

Order: Suliformes   Family: Fregatidae

Frigatebirds are large seabirds usually found over warm oceans. They are black, or black and white, with long wings and deeply forked tails. Males have colorful throat pouches that they can inflate. They cannot swim or walk well and can't take off from a flat surface. They have the largest wingspan compared to their body weight of any bird, meaning they can stay in the air for more than a week!

Boobies and Gannets: Plunge Divers

Order: Suliformes   Family: Sulidae

This family includes gannets and boobies. Both are medium-large coastal seabirds that dive headfirst into the water to catch fish.

  • Northern gannet, Morus bassanus (NC)

Cormorants and Shags: Dark Water Birds

Order: Suliformes   Family: Phalacrocoracidae

Cormorants are medium to large water birds, usually with mostly dark feathers and colored skin on their faces. Their bills are long, thin, and sharply hooked. They have four webbed toes.

Pelicans: Pouch Under Beak

Order: Pelecaniformes   Family: Pelecanidae

Pelicans are very large water birds with a special pouch under their beak. Like other birds in their group, they have four webbed toes.

Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns: Wading Birds

Order: Pelecaniformes   Family: Ardeidae

This family includes herons, egrets, and bitterns. Herons and egrets are medium to large wading birds with long necks and legs. Bitterns have shorter necks and are more secretive. When they fly, members of this family pull their necks back, unlike other long-necked birds like storks.

Ibises and Spoonbills: Unique Bills

Order: Pelecaniformes   Family: Threskiornithidae

This family includes ibises and spoonbills. They have long, wide wings and long bodies with long necks and legs. Their bills are also long; ibises have bills that curve downward, while spoonbills have straight, distinctly flattened bills.

New World Vultures: Nature's Cleaners

Order: Cathartiformes   Family: Cathartidae

New World vultures look like Old World vultures, but they are not closely related. They both eat dead animals. Unlike Old World vultures, which find food by sight, New World vultures have a great sense of smell to find carcasses.

Osprey: Fish-Eating Bird of Prey

Order: Accipitriformes   Family: Pandionidae

Ospreys are birds of prey that eat fish. They have a very large, strong hooked beak for tearing meat, powerful legs, strong talons, and excellent eyesight. There is only one species in this family.

Hawks, Eagles, and Kites: Powerful Hunters

Order: Accipitriformes   Family: Accipitridae

This family includes hawks, eagles, kites, and harriers. These birds of prey have very large, strong hooked beaks for tearing meat from their prey. They also have strong legs, powerful talons, and keen eyesight.

Barn-Owls: Heart-Shaped Faces

Order: Strigiformes   Family: Tytonidae

Barn-owls are medium to large owls with big heads and unique heart-shaped faces. They have long, strong legs with powerful talons.

Owls: Night Hunters

Order: Strigiformes   Family: Strigidae

Typical owls are solitary birds of prey that are active at night. They have large eyes that face forward and big ears. They also have a hawk-like beak and a clear circle of feathers around each eye, called a facial disk.

Kingfishers: Big Heads, Short Tails

Order: Coraciiformes   Family: Alcedinidae

Kingfishers are medium-sized birds with large heads, long pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails.

Woodpeckers: Tree Tappers

Order: Piciformes   Family: Picidae

Woodpeckers are small to medium-sized birds with chisel-like beaks, short legs, stiff tails, and long tongues for catching insects. Many woodpeckers tap loudly on tree trunks with their beaks.

Falcons and Caracaras: Fast Hunters

Order: Falconiformes   Family: Falconidae

This family includes falcons and caracaras. They are birds of prey that are active during the day. Unlike hawks and eagles, falcons kill their prey with their beaks instead of their talons.

Tyrant Flycatchers: Insect Eaters

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Tyrannidae

Tyrant flycatchers are songbirds found throughout North and South America. They look a bit like flycatchers from other parts of the world but are stronger and have tougher bills. Most of them eat insects.

Vireos: Greenish Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Vireonidae

Vireos are a group of small to medium-sized songbirds found only in the New World. They are usually greenish and look like wood-warblers, but they have stronger bills.

Shrikes: Impaling Hunters

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Laniidae

Shrikes are songbirds known for catching other birds and small animals. They sometimes impale the parts they don't eat on thorns. A shrike's beak is hooked, like a bird of prey.

  • Northern shrike, Lanius borealis (NC)

Crows, Jays, and Magpies: Smart Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Corvidae

This family includes crows, ravens, and jays. Corvids are larger than average songbirds, and some of the bigger species are very intelligent.

Tits, Chickadees, and Titmice: Woodland Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Paridae

The Paridae family includes small, stocky woodland birds with short, strong bills. They are adaptable and eat a mix of seeds and insects.

Larks: Ground Singers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Alaudidae

Larks are small ground birds known for their often fancy songs and display flights. Most larks are not very colorful. They eat insects and seeds.

Swallows: Aerial Feeders

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Hirundinidae

The swallow family is built for catching food in the air. They have slender, streamlined bodies, long pointed wings, and short bills with wide mouths. Their feet are better for perching than walking.

Kinglets: Tiny Crowned Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Regulidae

Kinglets are a small family of birds that look like titmice. They are very tiny birds that eat insects. Adult kinglets have colorful crowns on their heads, which is how they got their name.

Waxwings: Silky Feathers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Bombycillidae

Waxwings are a group of birds with soft, silky feathers and unique red tips on some of their wing feathers. These tips look like sealing wax, giving the group its name. They live in northern forests and eat insects in summer and berries in winter.

Nuthatches: Head-First Climbers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Sittidae

Nuthatches are small woodland birds. They have a special ability to climb down trees headfirst, unlike most other birds that can only climb up. Nuthatches have big heads, short tails, and strong bills and feet.

Treecreepers: Bark Explorers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Certhiidae

Treecreepers are small woodland birds, brown on top and white underneath. They have thin, pointed, downward-curved bills that they use to pull insects out of tree bark. They have stiff tail feathers, like woodpeckers, which help them support themselves on vertical trees.

Gnatcatchers: Delicate Insectivores

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Polioptilidae

These delicate birds look like Old World warblers in how they are built and what they do. They move restlessly through leaves looking for insects. Gnatcatchers are mostly soft bluish-gray and have the typical long, sharp bill of an insect-eater.

Wrens: Loud Singers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Troglodytidae

Wrens are small and often hard to see birds, except for their loud songs! They have short wings and thin, downward-curved bills. Several species often hold their tails straight up. All wrens eat insects.

Old World Flycatchers: Insect Catchers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Muscicapidae

The Old World flycatchers are a large family of small songbirds mostly found in the Old World. These are mainly small tree-dwelling birds that eat insects, many of them catching their prey while flying.

Mockingbirds and Thrashers: Amazing Mimics

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Mimidae

This family includes thrashers and mockingbirds. These birds are famous for their singing, especially their amazing ability to copy many different bird calls and other sounds they hear outside. They tend to be dull gray and brown in color.

Starlings: Gregarious Birds

Common starling in london
An immature female European starling

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Sturnidae

Starlings are small to medium-sized songbirds from the Old World with strong feet. They fly strongly and directly, and most are very social. They prefer open areas and eat insects and fruit. Many species have dark feathers with a metallic shine.

Thrushes and Allies: Ground Feeders

Hylocichla mustelina (cropped)
Wood thrush

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Turdidae

Thrushes are a group of songbirds found mostly in the Old World. They are plump, soft-feathered, small to medium-sized birds that eat insects or sometimes everything. They often feed on the ground. Many have beautiful songs.

Old World Sparrows: Seed Eaters

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Passeridae

Old World sparrows are small songbirds. Generally, sparrows are small, plump, brownish or grayish birds with short tails and strong, short beaks. Sparrows eat seeds, but they also eat small insects.

Wagtails and Pipits: Ground Foragers

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Motacillidae

This family includes wagtails and pipits. They are slender songbirds that feed on insects on the ground in open areas.

Finches, Euphonias, and Allies: Conical Bills

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Fringillidae

Finches are songbirds that eat seeds. They are small to medium-sized and have strong, usually cone-shaped beaks. All finches have twelve tail feathers and nine main wing feathers. These birds fly with a bouncing motion, alternating between flapping and gliding. Most sing well.

Longspurs and Snow Buntings: Grassy Field Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Calcariidae

This group of songbirds was once thought to be part of the New World sparrows. However, they are different in several ways and are usually found in open grassy areas.

New World Sparrows: Distinct Head Patterns

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Passerellidae

Most birds in this family are called sparrows, but they are not closely related to the Old World sparrows. Many of these birds have unique patterns on their heads.

Yellow-breasted Chat: A Unique Bird

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Icteriidae

This bird was once grouped with the wood-warblers, but experts weren't sure it truly belonged there. In 2017, it was placed in its own family because it's so unique!

Troupials and Allies: Colorful New World Birds

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Icteridae

The icterids are a group of small to medium-sized, often colorful songbirds found only in the New World. They include grackles, New World blackbirds, and orioles. Most species have black as their main feather color, often brightened with yellow, orange, or red.

New World Warblers: Small and Colorful

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Parulidae

The wood-warblers are a group of small, often colorful songbirds found only in the New World. Most live in trees, but some spend more time on the ground. Most birds in this family eat insects.

Cardinals and Allies: Strong-Billed Seed Eaters

Order: Passeriformes   Family: Cardinalidae

Cardinals are a family of strong, seed-eating birds with powerful bills. They are usually found in open woodlands. Males and females often have different feather colors.

See also

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List of birds of Acadia National Park Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.